


Monochrome to Technicolour

by CopperBreeches



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-25
Updated: 2012-10-25
Packaged: 2017-11-17 01:19:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/545933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperBreeches/pseuds/CopperBreeches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson is a dead man. He died in Afghanistan, he knows he's dead but maybe, just maybe, he's found someone to help him live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monochrome to Technicolour

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thank you to my beta Nix who helped from conception to final result. And who also contributed the title. 
> 
> Warning there is a death in this fic. If you want to know more (if you haven't guessed) skip to the end notes.

John Watson was dead. He had died bleeding out under a harsh Afghan sun when a bullet had ripped through his shoulder and pierced his subclavian artery. At that point John's soul or consciousness or whatever it was, should have left the earth for oblivion or an afterlife, but with the last thought of 'Please God let me live', John Watson found the world around him simply faded but didn't end. 

He remembered a bright light but he closed his eyes to it; it reminded him of sunlight in a desert. He kept his eyes shut and all he could see was darkness until he opened them some time later. When he did he found himself in hospital. 

He had been surprised by his location. A doctor told him he'd been seriously wounded but that he was healing. It was only after the doctor left that John realised he wasn't actually breathing. He tried holding his breath but there was no breath to hold. He felt for a pulse but there wasn't one. 

He would have panicked but he knew that neither heaven nor hell looked like a military hospital. Perhaps he was just tired and worn out. He needed to investigate, he was a doctor, that's what doctors did. They checked symptoms and worked out the cause. 

His investigations proved he was dead. No machine could pick up a heartbeat. Several monitors had been taken away as faulty. Yet when a doctor listened with a stethoscope apparently a heartbeat could be heard. Perhaps the alternative so was ridiculous the doctor's subconscious made him or her believe John had a beating heart and was alive. After all, people didn't talk to dead men and joke with them as far as John knew. 

John found he didn’t need to breathe, something that had shocked his physiotherapist during his first swimming pool session. He hadn’t realised he'd spent longer than was usual under the water. He had no need to hold his breath. Still, he worked out how to train himself into breathing, making it a conscious action but one which he didn't have to think about too much. 

What he was aside from dead John didn't know. His shoulder did heal which made no sense as there was no blood flow. So at least he wasn’t a zombie, or some other sort of animated corpse. He didn’t have pointed teeth and no-one had bitten him so vampire was out. He could touch things and couldn't walk through walls so he wasn't a ghost. 

He was just dead. Dead but conscious. Although John could interact with things he struggled to really feel anything. Maybe this was his own personal purgatory. Or maybe it was hell. He couldn't get excited or happy or sad or even that angry. His emotions were muted. 

He developed a limp and he wasn't sure why. It didn't hurt, his shoulder didn't even hurt anymore. It wasn't healed completely but far more than John had expected. He couldn't even feel pain properly. He noted it down on his mental list of reasons why he was dead. It had to remain a mental list unless he wanted to be sent to a psychiatric facility. His therapist was bad enough. 

Eventually John got used to being dead. He ate but was not surprised when he didn't go to the toilet. He didn't know where exactly anything he ingested went but it had to have gone somewhere as there was always room for more. Whatever he ate tasted bland and he had to gauge the reactions of others to work out how it was supposed to taste. 

After a few months he was deemed healthy enough to move into halfway house accommodation. It was clean and basic but very boring. John's world was muted further and he wondered if he had descended to another circle of hell. 

Then John took a walk in the park and Mike Stamford recognised him. Had John been capable he would have warned Mike off talking to a dead man. They weren't pleasant company. 

“I got shot.” I died. 

Mike didn't seem to mind. He was all friendliness and smiles and John wished that he could feel something more than recognition for Mike. They had been close once but that was before. When John had been alive and not stuck in his own personal hell. 

Time with Mike did at least give John glimmers of humanity something he had been sorely lacking and when Mike suggested a flatmate John was intrigued. When he actually met the man he was more than intrigued.

“I know you're an army doctor...”

In fact the only thing Sherlock Holmes of 221B Baker Street had not managed to deduce was the fact John was dead. Though as no-one ever noticed, this wasn't a failing. John was impressed, very impressed and for the first time in months he felt affected by something. It was a bright, clear emotion as if Sherlock Holmes had pulled back a curtain in John's soul and let in light. 

The more time John spent with him the more emotions seemed to seep back. Aside form the obvious – amazed, astonished, impressed - there were other emotions becoming sharper too. There was annoyance at being abandoned and kidnapped by a mysterious man. There was embarrassment at the misunderstanding of asking Sherlock if he had a boyfriend. There was loyalty, enjoyment, fun, respect. 

“Got your breath back?” For a moment John almost felt as if he had. 

There was a whole rainbow of feeling trailing in Sherlock's wake and John followed it to find the pot of gold at the end. 

When Sherlock disappeared in the cab John felt worry and concern. When he shot the cabbie to save Sherlock the wave of relief was so powerful that for a moment John had almost felt his heart beat again. 

During dinner, John watched Sherlock actually eat something and for once he could feel spices dancing on his tongue. Sherlock had brought life into the world of a dead man and he didn't even know it. 

John learnt that although he had struggled to feel things Sherlock struggled to take feelings into account. Of course Sherlock had never been without them. He felt but he could distance himself whereas John had never liked the muffling insulation that had been placed on his emotions after he died. Sherlock, who considered himself above feelings, had brought them back into John's life. 

Not all the emotions were positive. John more often than not felt more than a little annoyance at Sherlock with the state of the kitchen, the lack of shopping and the casual borrowing of his laptop. Yet anger and annoyance were still something he had missed and he would be grateful for Sherlock's thoughtless actions on occasion.

Slowly John felt as if he was coming back to life. His heart still remained silent no matter how often he checked and his breathing was still the result of conscious thought, but his soul felt different. It felt as if a cold numb limb was slowly being warmed up by the furnace of Sherlock.

As a result John had become a little complacent. Especially when it came to relationships. Whilst he liked Sarah and he appreciated her he didn’t feel with her as she should, she couldn’t kindle an emotion in him. She couldn't make his heart beat. Sherlock couldn’t but it felt as if he might and that might was enough to make John stay. 

Of course he still tried with other girlfriends but they weren't even able to echo Sherlock. He also felt a little guilty. As a dead man he doubted he could offer them anything. He slept with them but he never dreamt. It was just blackness and it was too much like death for John to really enjoy it. 

Only Sherlock could exhaust him to the point of dreaming, dragging John around London in the pursuit of criminals. He would dream of it, replay it in his mind. His own personal heaven in his dreams. If heaven was following Sherlock for the rest of eternity John felt as if he could live, or die, like that. 

Even when Sherlock became too focused on the game to care John never seriously considered being anywhere else. Sherlock just didn't understand what it was like to not even have the option to care. John half wondered if he could. 

Then Moriarty and the pool. John was already dead so he had no compunction about risking what his life had become to save Sherlock. He didn’t know if he could die a second death but as long as Sherlock lived John could die happy. 

What amazed John more was Sherlock's obvious show of emotion when they thought they were safe. Sherlock did care and he cared about John. 

It was then with Sherlock standing with a gun trained on the explosives that John realised Sherlock had awakened another emotion in him – love. 

Being blown up with Sherlock would be a fitting end.

It hadn't ended there though. In a way it had only just started for Sherlock and for John. 

The Woman, Irene Adler, seemed to induce some kind of feeling in Sherlock but mostly jealousy in John. He knew what it was like to be dead but John didn't mourn her. For a moment he had thought she was like him, dead, but then he had learned Sherlock had taken her pulse. Something he'd never been able to do with John. 

For a while jealousy had been the most powerful emotion John had felt since he'd died. The effect Irene had on his emotions was awful enough but then there was the effect she had on Sherlock's emotions. Sherlock had brought John to life, or at least a semblance of it and yet John wondered why it was Irene who seemed to spark something similar in Sherlock and not John himself. 

After she was gone, John felt reassured. Even though John did not wish death on anyone, except perhaps anyone who would dare hurt Sherlock. Luckily Irene's phone remained in a closed drawer out of sight. 

Other emotions grew and jostled in John, each of them making the world more real, allowing him to have actions and reactions and all of them encased by Sherlock and Sherlock's actions. The fear he had felt in the lab might have been supposedly caused by the drug but it had been Sherlock's manipulations that had caused the real fear - the sound of a dog, the way his friend had talked to him. 

John's fear was because of Sherlock. Yet he couldn't be too angry at him. Fear could be healthy, good. Sherlock had struggled with it, struggled with overwhelming emotion and for a moment John had wondered if Sherlock too had been a dead man before they met. Yet dead men would never be upset by emotion, even deep set fear. 

Love. Fear. Jealousy. Amazement. Respect. Adoration. Need. Want. Hope. Care. Pride. Anger. Contrition. Sadness. Happiness. John felt all them all through the world filter that was Sherlock. Sherlock had given him a kaleidoscope of emotion that twisted and turned and made the whole something John could engage with. 

John might be dead but there was no doubting Sherlock was alive. Through Sherlock, John was able to live. It didn't matter if he couldn't breathe, didn't have a heart beat, Sherlock had those things and had enough for them both. 

It couldn't last. 

Moriarty wanted more than for Sherlock to be a dead man. He wanted Sherlock to be a dead man no-one listened to. He killed Sherlock's reputation as an assassin would perform a perfect hit and leave no traces. John could feel panic, could feel life slipping away as Sherlock was publicly denounced.

Sherlock had become his life and now that life was being ripped apart by the press. 

As Sherlock stood on the rooftop John didn’t want to believe it.

“It's my note.”

John’s mind screamed no. Then it happened. He screamed Sherlock's name out loud but he watched his life fall to the ground. John felt a jolt inside, as if something had shifted and it hurt, it was a pain worse than been shot. It was worse than dying.

When he was knocked to the ground John could feel things were changing. He was feeling pain but the rest of the world was getting brighter. John felt as if he was looking at an old photograph left out too long in the sun. The edges, the details, were fading from him. 

He saw Sherlock’s blood and instinctively went to take a pulse. Feeling none he was suddenly reminded that his own heart had not beat for years. Sherlock’s had been enough for both of them but now he was gone and nothing was holding John up. Things were fading more.

He could hear voices but not what they were saying. The light felt blinding and John went toward it. What did he have left now? There, on a bloodied London pavement John Watson, a dead man walking, no longer moved, or thought. 

 

In the morgue Sherlock waited for the all clear from Molly before he risked dropping his façade. Everyone had to believe he was dead. That was the only way to keep his friends safe, to keep John safe. 

“You can come out,” Molly said, though her words were muffled by the black body bag. Sherlock could hear her carefully unzipping it. 

It felt good to move again, to feel alive. Sherlock wouldn't be able to linger though. His plan had been hasty in execution though meticulously planned and he still had things he had to do. Mostly he had to make sure that Moriarty did not have a backup plan. 

Looking around the morgue Sherlock spotted two other body bags, freshly delivered. One he imagined was Moriarty and he had no desire to see that body, but he was curious as to the other. Leaping off the table he went over. 

“Is this the body you acquired...” Sherlock started asking before noticing that the body inside was clearly a different build. It couldn’t pass for him, nor for Moriarty. 

“Sherlock,” Molly said. “The other bag it's...” she paused. She was upset, she'd been crying. Sherlock hadn’t thought his death would have that effect on her. Molly knew it was all a fake and as good as an actress as she was she wouldn't shed tears like that for a demise that wasn't real. 

“Who is it?” Sherlock asked, a feeling of dread spreading throughout him like a poison. 

“It's best if I show you,” Molly said. “It might be a bit of a shock.”

Sherlock could feel fear, worry, physical responses of nausea and adrenaline. “Show me.”

As Molly unzipped the bag, Sherlock felt his pride at pulling off his death crumble. “John.” There was no mistaking the face, Sherlock had John’s face memorised, but never had it been so lifeless. “How? The snipers were called off!”

“He wasn't shot,” Molly said, looking down guiltily. “He just sort of... died. The witnesses said he collapsed on the pavement and they couldn't get a pulse. They tried CPR and they got him straight in here but there was nothing anyone could do.”

“No,” Sherlock said. This was all wrong. John wasn’t meant to die and certainly not like this. John was a doctor, a soldier, a companion, a friend. He wasn't just meant to leave the world. That had been the point of Sherlock's death, the phone call, it had all been to protect John.

“We'll know more after the autopsy,” Molly said, quietly.

“No.” The idea of John reduced to mere body parts was wrong wrong wrong. 

“It has to be done, Sherlock. You want to know, don’t you?” Molly asked.

Did Sherlock really want to know what had ripped John from him? He wasn't sure. Sherlock Holmes who wanted to know every solution didn’t know if he wanted the answer to this puzzle. Answers meant endings and this was not meant to be John’s ending. 

Cautiously he reached out to touch John, to check it wasn’t an elaborate joke. He placed his hand on John’s cheek and hoped. 

 

Whatever anyone said about going into the light they were wrong. The light fucking hurt. John could feel nothing but pain and hurt and the light was too bright to do anything. He felt as if he was stumbling about somewhere that wasn’t real. This wasn't heaven but it was close to hell. He tried crying out but could not speak.

Everything would be all right if he could find Sherlock. If Sherlock was dead and he was dead surely they were meant to find each other? John closed his eyes and tried to reach out for Sherlock with his mind, with his hand, anything. 

For a moment there was nothing but then John felt warmth on his face. What was more remarkable was he felt his heart begin to beat. He took in a deep breath and opened his eyes. Then he saw him – Sherlock was touching his cheek. Sherlock was here. 

John gasped and started to breathe, he sat up even as Sherlock looked alive and surprised. John was breathing and it hurt. He hadn’t had air in his lungs for so long he felt like a drowning man suddenly overwhelmed by oxygen. 

He was in a body bag? He fought his way out of it and rolled off the table onto the floor. Where was he? What was going on. He was on his knees wheezing but gradually his breathing was improving as the seconds ticked by. His body knew what to do.

“Oh my God,” Molly said. Molly was there? Molly wasn't dead.

“Where are we?” John asked, gasping as his body rejoiced in the overload of oxygen.

“Bart’s morgue,” Sherlock said. “You were dead, John.”

John looked up and started to giggle. “So were you except I've been dead a lot longer.”

He scrambled around and stood up. He pressed two fingers to his wrist. A pulse. An actual pulse. “I need to check,” he said, walking steadily over to Sherlock. 

Although still shocked Sherlock held out his wrist. John took his pulse. Slightly higher than would be expected but it was there. It was real, as real as John.

“Molly, I need you to get me a cardiac monitor,” John said.

“Okay, yes,” Molly looked very confused but she left under John's instructions. 

“They thought you were dead, John. How did you do it?” Sherlock asked.

“I was dead, Sherlock. You never bothered to take my pulse, no one did. I didn’t have to breathe and I didn't have a heartbeat. I'm a doctor I know a dead man when I see one. Am one.”

“That's...”

“Ridiculous? Crazy? I know, Sherlock, believe me I know,” John said. “You brought me back. You with your amazing genius and your annoying ego.”

“I don't understand this, John.”

“Says a man who just fell to his death.”

“That was a trick, John. I had to fake my death or Moriarty's men would have killed you.”

“Can't kill a dead man,” John said. What John was thinking was that Sherlock cared. He cared enough to fake his death. Yet he hadn't known. “Except you did. I saw you fall to your death and my death came back to me.”

“I didn't know, John.”

“Funny thing about love,” John said. “You don't always know until it’s gone.”

“Love, John?”

“If you jumped off that building for anything less I'll die again.”

“It wasn’t less. It was... more.”

“Maybe that's why I'm not dead then.” John burst into a fit of giggles and Sherlock joined in. He wasn't dead. Sherlock wasn't dead. 

When Molly returned with the cardiac monitor John finally had the proof that he and Sherlock were alive. The fact John exhibited the signs of life that had been missing in him for so long amazed him more than the fact Sherlock had faked his own death. 

“We can't go back to Baker Street,” Sherlock said. “Moriarty will be having the place watched.”

“So what do we do?” John asked.

“John...”

“Sherlock, if you think I'm giving up this life you're wrong. Where you go I'm going. I can't live without you and I mean that literally.”

“You do have a heart beat, John.”

“And who knows how long it's going to last,” John countered. “I don't know if I'm going to wake up tomorrow still being able to breathe so don't tell me I should stay here, Sherlock.”

“All right,” Sherlock agreed. He reached out and gently touched John's wrist. “I should have taken your pulse earlier,” he said quietly. 

“No,” John said. “I didn’t have one for you to take.”

He wasn't surprised when Sherlock gently kissed him. It left him breathless, not because of a lack of oxygen but because he was alive and Sherlock was alive and more than that Sherlock loved him. 

Later, lying in bed in a hotel, John had his ear pressed to Sherlock's chest and heard a heart beating. What was better was he heard his own heart beat echoing it. No matter what happened, he and Sherlock were together and they were alive and John's heart would never stop beating whilst Sherlock was in his life. Of that he was certain.

**Author's Note:**

> The deaths of course refer to Sherlock and John but of course the reality of the deaths isn't straightfoward. In the case of Sherlock's death if you've seen 'The Reichenbach Fall' you'll already know he faked it. Still, I thought I better put a warning in.


End file.
